The new facility is located on Country Squire Road in Woolwich Township, just north of the Waterloo boundary. Half of the 104,000-square-foot facility will house administration offices, while the other half will be used for storage and maintenance of vehicles and equipment.

A groundbreaking ceremony was held Wednesday for the new Waterloo North Hydro building with Woolwich Mayor Bill Strauss, Bernie Melloul, president of Melloul-Blamey construction, Wellesley Mayor Ross Kelterborn, Waterloo Mayor Brenda Halloran, Rene Gatien, president of Waterloo North Hydro, Eugene Moser, chair of Waterloo North Hydro’s board of directors, and Chuck Martin, director of the Waterloo North Hydro Holding Corporation.

Site preparation is already well underway; work on the foundations will start in two weeks, with the building scheduled to be completed by December 2011. The 100 employees of Waterloo North Hydro who work in the service centre should be moving in before the end of the year, said project manager Pedro Bevelander.

The new facility is more than twice the size of the existing 47,000-square-foot service centre. Waterloo North Hydro bought 35 acres of property, 7.5 acres of which will be used for a storage yard. In the future, the site might also have a transformer station; one of the factors that led to the selection of the site was the Hydro One high power line crossing the property.

“There’s enough space for future growth,” Bevelander said.

Melloul-Blamey Construction of Waterloo, which built the Woolwich Memorial Centre, received the contract for the construction. The total budget for the project, including purchasing the land, fees and construction costs, furniture and equipment, is $26 million.

The new building will incorporate measures to make it environmentally friendly and energy efficient, including a geothermal heating and cooling system, operable windows and a 40,000-litre rainwater harvesting system.

An illustration of the building showing the administration offices on the left and the maintenance area on the right.

The old house and farm buildings on the site have been demolished, but some of the materials were saved to be re-used. Concrete was crushed and will be used for structural fill, and the old barn beams, made of elm hardwood, will be reworked into boardroom tables and wood finishes inside the building.

Bevelander said the service centre will be built to a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) silver standard, and could potentially end up meeting LEED gold standards.

“We’re only three points away from gold,” he said.

WNH plans a controlled transition to the new building once it’s complete. At that point, it will look at selling the current site at  300 Northfield Dr. E.

Waterloo North Hydro delivers electricity to 140,000 residents in the city of Waterloo and Woolwich and Wellesley townships.

That changes today (July 24) when the club hosts the semi-finals of the South Western Ontario Regional

Aquaducks Erin Nechanicky, Carmen Read, Sarah Norcott and Melanie McArdle wait for instructions during swim practice Tuesday evening at the Woolwich Memorial Centre.

Swimming Association. Close to 150 swimmers from Elmira, Kincardine and Fergus will dive into the new pool in the Woolwich Memorial Centre.

“The other two teams are really looking forward to coming,” said Cindy Nicholson, the team’s manger. “A lot of parents have said ‘I can’t wait to see the new facility.’”

The parents will have a good view too, keeping an eye on the competition from the lobbies upstairs and downstairs.

The swimmers are battling for a top-eight finish and a berth in the championship finals in Guelph Aug. 7.
Elmira’s team of 24 is much smaller than either of their competitors, who have around 60 swimmers each.
The team has a number of new swimmers this year, thanks in part to the new pool. Parents bringing their kids to the arena for hockey or figure skating saw the new facility, learned about the Aquaducks and signed up their children.

Despite their smaller numbers and a sizable group of new members, they’ve done well so far this season, Nicholson said.

Swimmers practice twice a week during the year, which is divided into four sections. The summer session is usually the smallest, as some kids opt out of competing and return in the fall. Although they do have a series of meets during the summer, the Aquaducks are still a recreational swim club. Swimmers who decide they want to be more serious about competing move on to the Region of Waterloo swim club after a year or two.
Today’s meet gets underway around 9 a.m. and should wrap up around lunchtime.

John Hogg, president of Green Grid Solutions, says the Ontario Power Authority’s decision to cut the price offered for solar power has destroyed any confidence people had in it.

On July 2, the power authority quietly announced that the price for power generated using ground-mounted solar arrays would drop from 80.2 cents to 58.8 cents per kilowatt hour. Smaller rooftop systems aren’t affected by the change.

OPA painted the change as fixing a “glitch” in the system when ground-mounted projects proved far more popular than anticipated. The government received 16,000 applications, of which 10,000 were for ground-mounted systems.

The change caught applicants and manufacturers of solar equipment flat-footed.

“This rate cut on the ground-mounted systems caused everyone that had an application in or a deposit in to cancel orders,” said John Hubman, president of H-Y Manufacturing, located outside of Elora.

H-Y Manufacturing makes tracking systems that allow ground-mounted solar arrays to follow the sun, maximizing their power output. They started building the tracking systems after the program was announced, investing $150,000 in machinery and another $150,000 in research and development.

In early fall 2009, still in the depths of the recession, Hubman had six employees. By November, with orders pouring in, he was hiring people back and soon added a second shift. The company went from building one or two systems a week to building between eight and 10.

Now, customers are cancelling or putting their orders on hold and they aren’t building anything. The investment and the jobs created are now in jeopardy.

“Money aside, the worrisome part is the effect it’s going to have in laying people off. It’s back to the gloom days of the middle of last year,” Hubman said.

Paul Parker, a professor of geography and environmental management at the University of Waterloo, welcomed the program when it was announced.  He’s had solar panels on the roof of his Conestogo home for the past five years. Through a net metering system he gets credit for his electricity costs, which works out to between six and 10 cents per kilowatt hour. At that rate, it will take him 50 years to pay off his investment.
Few Ontarians were willing to shell out tens of thousands of dollars and wait 50 years to recoup their costs, which is why Parker was happy to see the government making solar power more attractive. He believes the new price of 58.8 cents per kilowatt hour is appropriate, given that the costs of equipment have come down substantially.

“To my mind, how it’s implemented is the problem,” Parker said. “I can understand the frustration, if you make your decision based on one price and then find out you’re getting a different one.”

While many applicants and suppliers were taken by surprise by the price change, John Hogg has been waiting for something like this to happen. Hogg is president of Green Grid Solutions of Waterloo and has been in the renewable energy business for 10 years. He says that 80 cents per kilowatt hour is an unheard-of price; in Europe, governments offer between 60 and 70 cents and people can’t believe it when he tells them Ontario was offering 80 cents.

“It was almost disappointing that the number was so high because it just created a frenzy and from experience with OPA, you know they’re going to claw back at a certain point.”

The biggest problem is that OPA intends to make the price cut retroactive to early 2010. People who submitted their applications and went ahead with securing financing and ordering the systems are now caught in the middle.

“It would make sense to say from this day forward we’re going to cut rates, but to make it retroactive … to go out to the communities and promote renewable energy, promote 80 cents and then make it retroactive to before they started this publicity campaign, that’s a bit disappointing,” Hogg said. “The confidence people had in OPA is completely dissolved.”

Hogg pointed out that the rate cut disproportionately affects rural areas, where people have the space to install ground-mounted systems. Farmers, already skeptical of anything involving government, will be even more so now, he said.

Hogg believes that when the 30-day comment period for the change expires, the government may compromise a bit and settle on a price somewhere between the 58.8 and the original 80 cents per kilowatt hour.

Hubman isn’t optimistic. He’s waiting for Aug. 3 when the comment period closes, but he’s afraid that he’ll be laying off employees again.

“I think it’s a forgone conclusion,” he said. “They hoodwinked a lot of people in Ontario saying that we’ll pay you 80 cents, go ahead and develop all of this and create jobs.”

The Waterloo charitable organization supports agriculture in Haiti through co-operatives. FIDA also operates Wall’s International Guest House in Port-au-Prince, which hosts tourists, mission teams and adoptive parents. The building collapsed in January’s earthquake,  killing Elmira nurse Yvonne Martin.

Canadian Idol finalist Shane Wiebe and his wife Angela perform a benefit concert Friday.

Alexis Barkman, FIDA’s promotions coordinator and granddaughter of FIDA founders Jack and Anne Wall, was in Haiti with her mother, Betsy Wall, when the earthquake happened.

“It was an absolutely surreal experience,” she said. “The buildings just disintegrated.”

At the same time FIDA is rebuilding its guest house, using funds from the visitors who are staying in the one undamaged building and temporary shelters, it continues to raise funds for agricultural development. FIDA employs a staff of 30 Haitians who provide local services.

Barkman explained that her grandfather was one of the founders of International Child Care, which in the 1970s undertook a national tuberculosis control program. He learned that children were getting tuberculosis because their parents couldn’t afford to feed them properly, and began promoting agricultural cooperatives.

Shane and Angela Wiebe live in Abbotsford, B.C., where Shane grew up, but a cross-Canada tour in support of their latest album is bringing them to the area. Angela grew up in Stratford and is a good friend of the Wall family, so a benefit concert was a natural fit. Shane’s name will be familiar to fans of Canadian Idol; he was a top five finalist in the show’s second season.

The FIDA concert takes place July 16 at 7 p.m. at the Great Hall, Luther Village in Waterloo. Admission is free, with donations going to support agricultural development in Haiti. For more information, call 519-886-9520.

“I’ve had a really good experience with dance, and I want to share that with children in the community,” McDermid said.

McDermid, 17, has been dancing since she was eight at the Carousel Dance Centre in Waterloo. She started with one class a week and now takes as many classes as she can fit into her schedule, in ballet, modern jazz and pointe. During the school year, she dances for 13 hours a week, spending most of her evenings and all day Saturday at the studio.

Having received a business startup grant, Kira McDermid hopes to share her passion for dancing with young children at her Barefoot Dance Camp in Wellesley.

A member of Carousel’s travelling company, McDermid performs all over Ontario, and dance has taken her as far as New York City and the Netherlands. As much as she loves performing, McDermid is cognizant of the fact that very few dancers are able to make a career of it. Her dream is to open her own studio and share her love of dance by teaching.

“This is what I’ve wanted to do since Grade 9,” she said.

McDermid has some teaching experience under her belt already, having worked at Carousel’s dance camp and spending last summer working at a gymnastics camp in Montreal. She has also supply taught and assisted with classes at the studio.

The Barefoot Dance Camp is open to children aged five to 10 who want to try dance. The camp will be held in the Wellesley Community Centre starting the week of July 26 to 30. At this point, McDermid has enough interest to offer classes for two more weeks in August, and she’s hoping to attract enough participants for three or four weeks.

McDermid, who is going into Grade 12 at Waterloo-Oxford District Secondary School, got a $1,500 startup grant from Ontario’s Summer Company program, which helps youth ages 15 to 29 start their own businesses. The funding is going toward paying an employee, Amy Sproule, and purchasing some craft supplies and toys for the times when the children aren’t dancing. McDermid gets to keep the money she brings in, and there is the possibility of receiving another $1,500 upon successful completion of the camp.

McDermid will be running morning and afternoon sessions at the community centre. The cost of the camp is $60 per week for half days and $80 for full days. McDermid is keeping fees low in order to make the camp available to as many people as possible. Ideally, she’s hoping for about eight students per session.

Students will learn skips, hops and gallops as well as basic ballet terminology. McDermid aims to make the learning process creative and interesting and maintain a summer camp atmosphere. To that end, she has consulted her own teachers for ideas and input.

So far only girls have registered for the camp but boys are welcome too, McDermid said. Dance is a great activity to get kids moving and give them something to do.

“There aren’t that many activities for children [in Wellesley], especially in the summer,” she noted.

For more information, contact McDermid at 519-656-3212 or email kiramcdermid@live.ca.

The Kings have lost a number of players from last season’s team, some expected and some unexpected. Three players have signed with other clubs, and two more have tryouts with OHL teams. The coaching staff also knew they would be without veterans Jeff Zippel and Michael Therrien, who graduated out of the Junior hockey system last year.

One of the team’s veteran defencemen, Jake Jefferies, has a co-op placement through school and won’t be able to commit the time necessary. And top blueliner Jon Jutzi is headed to play with the Powell River Kings of the British Columbia Hockey League.

“We’re obviously very pleased for Jon; he’s moving to what most people would suggest is the best Junior hockey outside of the CHL,” Haddaway said.

Goaltender Brendan Gorecki will be playing Junior A next season with the Milton Icehawks. Last year’s top rookie, Ryan Johnston, and forward Tyson LeBlanc have also signed with Junior A clubs – Johnston with Nepean, and LeBlanc with Newmarket – signings that came as something of a surprise to the coaching staff.
Two players the Kings would welcome back but aren’t counting on are Brennon Pearce and top scorer Riley Sonnenburg, who have tryouts with OHL teams. Another player with an asterisk beside his name is Seth Horricks, who may have work commitments that interfere.

Although the player turnover is higher than expected, Haddaway commented that it seems to be the nature of the league.

“Last year, by bringing in so many young guys – even though we would lose some – we could still have a strong returning core, and that’s exactly what we do have.”

Returning next season are Andrew Smith, Brad Kraus, Shane Smith, Zach Salomon, Lukas Baleshta, Jarred Parent, Spencer MacCormack, Kody Ellis, Nick Horrigan and Josh Woolley.

The Kings have traded Andrew Schacht to Waterloo for blueliner Colton Wolfe-Sabo, who had 18 points last season and 27 in his rookie season with the Siskins. Haddaway would like to add another offensive defenceman and a stay-at-home player to fill  Zippel’s role.

Up front, the Kings have signed Brady Campbell, who played Junior C in Blenheim last year, notching 19 goals and 20 assists. The coach would like to add another top-six scoring forward, and said the rest of the forward positions will be filled by players who display grittiness and a strong work ethic.

Haddaway said the coaching staff would like to have the roster finalized as quickly as possible after training camp opens Aug. 23, but the reality is they’ll be tweaking it up to and past the start of the season.
“No one likes to think of it this way, but I’ve said to many players in the past, tryouts go right up to Jan 10, because that’s when you can still tinker with the roster,” Haddaway said.

The team looks to be on the young side again this year, with only two 20-year-olds (Parent and Woolley) on the roster at this point.

“To me, that’s a good thing,” Haddaway said. “I don’t ever want youth to be equated with ‘can’t win,’ because some of the hungriest teams I’ve ever coached were young. The team the Elmira Sugar Kings finished with last year may have been the youngest in the league, and we were certainly close to winning. The guys that are coming back, they have one more year of Junior experience, and that’s supposed to go a long way to helping us develop this year.”

Having been met my local politicians upon landing at the Region of Waterloo International Airport in Breslau Monday, Her Majesty The Queen was whisked to Waterloo for a tour of Reasearch in Motion.

 

Joshua MacKinnon catches air on the new fun box that is part of the temporary skate park set up in the Wellesley arena this summer.

The camp offers two-week sessions for boys between the ages of 12 and 17. Each of the three available sessions focuses on a different theme, but all end the same way: with a three-day canoe trip on Crane Lake.

“Ultimately, we believe that kids experience God through nature,” said Ron Weber. “When you bring a kid from a city or an urban environment into the wilderness and really expose them to the outdoors, the change in them is amazing.”

This year, the camp has seen higher registration numbers than in any previous year, their lot is bustling and they have almost reached capacity.

“We have kids come from all walks of life – kids from upper class families who typically have things handed to them, to kids who have lost a parent and need to work through some of their issues, to refugees who are new to Canada; this is a camp for kids who need camp.”

Ron worked as a builder for a number of years and then spent some time working at a kids’ camp in the U.S. before deciding that his passion was for the outdoors and for what the camp experience could provide for kids from very diverse backgrounds.

“After a number of years of working at camp I began to realize that it was group work which allowed them to grow and develop their social skills. They aren’t going to have everything handed to them here. Group work teaches the kids to depend on each other and trust each other.”

The DIY-style camp allows campers the chance to learn to work together to construct living quarters, prepare meals, out-trip, portage, and catch fish.

When Weber first began working at camp, he would see kids arrive and then depart swiftly for home when they experienced a bout of homesickness, but he says it’s not quite so straightforward at Crane Lake.

“We had a kid once who had some behavior issues and didn’t want to participate,” he explained. “He thought we were going to send him home if he acted up but we worked with him and got through his fits. We stuck with him. We are not going to send someone home – we work through things together, as a group.”

Registration for the first two sessions of camp are now closed, but a few spots remain for the third session.  The final session of camp, entitled ‘Discovering the World of Nature’ runs from August 3-15 and will give campers the opportunity to study the plant and wildlife native to the Muskoka area. Every day, kids will get the opportunity to spot deer, moose, and other animals that roam the woods surrounding Crane Lake. They can also take part in a construction project using materials from the woods or go fishing, swimming, and canoeing.

To make sure they are inclusive to many different kids, bursaries are available for families who require financial assistance and the organization’s application and interview process helps to ensure each session is filled with campers who could benefit from two weeks where their needs and issues are given priority attention.

“I want kids to be able to come up here and just have fun in the outdoors,” said Weber. “This camp is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

That’s why it was so alarming when in 2006, bees began dying off in large numbers. In the United States, the culprit was Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), believed to be a combination of factors, including parasites, viruses, bacteria, poor nutrition and pesticides. In Canada, winter mortality rates that were three times higher than normal were caused by the parasitic varroa mite, harsh winter conditions and insufficient food reserves for winter.

Beekeeper Jerry Dietrich holds a frame partially filled with honey in one of his bee yards outside Alma. This year’s warm weather has been a boon to beekeepers, boosting bee populations and providing them with ample sources of nectar and pollen.

At the same time that beekeepers have been battling honeybee die-offs, they’ve faced poor honey yields. Last year honey production in Ontario was the lowest it’s been since 1982, when the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs began collecting data.
Jerry Dietrich of BeeHaven Apiaries in Alma said his honey crop was down to one-third of its normal volume for the past two years due to the cool, wet weather.

“There were a lot of discouraged commercial beekeepers,” he said.

Dietrich has about 100 hives in five bee yards around Alma, and produces between three and seven tonnes of honey per year. At 100 hives he’s considered a small commercial producer, but Dietrich sees himself as a hobbyist. He started keeping bees 15 years ago and has gradually built up the number of hives since he retired in 2005.

So far this year is off to a better start. The warm weather early in spring meant bee populations built quickly. Honey production started strong with the dandelion blossoms everywhere, paused during a late snowfall, then resumed with the flowering of silver maples, poplars and willow trees. Dietrich welcomed the hot weather this week, explaining that it dries out blossoms enough for bees to access the nectar and pollen.

Dietrich’s backyard is considered a bee yard, but most of his hives are located on surrounding farms, with the permission of the farmer. One is in an old apple orchard; another is located in a small stand of trees near fields of canola and red clover. Most farmers are willing to cooperate with beekeepers, he said, because more pollinators means better yields.

While honey production is important, it’s their status as pollinators that has researchers so concerned about the welfare of the honeybee. The value of honeybees to pollination of crops in Canada is estimated at $1.3 to $1.7 billion annually.

In the United States, migratory beekeeping – where beekeepers load their hives on flatbed trucks and rent them out for pollination, following the blossoming season north – is critical to agriculture. It is also part of the problem; the practice of transporting bees over long distances is believed to have weakened hives and contributed to spreading disease.

With the causes of honeybee die-offs pinpointed – at least in Ontario – research has shifted to finding solutions. Organizations like the Ontario Beekeepers Association make recommendations on best practices and conduct inspections to monitor hive health.

Globally, the hunt continues for ways to protect these tiny but valuable insects – and protect our food supply in the process.

Built in 1854, the former township hall is the oldest continually-used municipal building in the Region of Waterloo. The exterior of the building is the original stone, while the interior, with its brown paneling and green tile floor, is vintage 1970s.

The flooring and paneling will be replaced, the front door widened and new windows installed. Eventually the porch will be rebuilt to bring it level with the front door. Meeting Monday night, councillors considered two options for new audience chairs.

The renovations are necessary to make the building accessible and address health and safety issues, said chief administrative officer Susan Duke. The tiles in the audience gallery are buckling and likely have asbestos in them, while the paneling is not fire rated. Renovations to the front entrance and washrooms are necessary to make the building wheelchair accessible.

The 2010 budget includes $50,000 for interior renovations, $20,000 for work on the exterior, $4,000 for new chairs and $5,000 for making the washrooms wheelchair accessible. Another $7,000 was set aside for replacing the oil furnace.

Wellesley councillors had discussed the renovations a number of times over the past three years and agreed something had to be done but were unable to agree how much. The deteriorating condition of the building and the need to comply with provincial accessibility standards finally forced the issue.

“There are health and safety and accessibility issues that must be addressed,” Duke said.